Heavy Oxidation Removal
If the oxidation is heavy, one way to remove it is to use ground pumice stone available at paint stores (or it was still available 15 years ago which was the last time I used it!). It is a powder you mix with water and apply wet. I like it because it cuts well and, taa taa, it never burns as it is water based. Makes a mess as white slop slings all over the place..but what the heck...it doesn't burn. I power buff soaking then wringing out the pad before starting. Mix the powder/water in a bucket about twice as thick as sea gull poop. Reach in the bucket, stir, spread some on the buffer pad and go to town. It settles rapidly so stirring is needed before each smear of the mixture on the pad. You can also smear some directly on the boat (or car or whatever you are buffing) and run the buffer over it. A slow buffer speed is desirable to avoid cutting too fast and to avoid slinging compound all over the place. I use my ancient Craftsman clicking the power trigger on and off to slow it down. I was concerned that this would damage the buffer, but it has been thru thousands of clicks by this time and it still works. Be very careful...it cuts rapidly and it quite easy to take too much off. The ground pumice is like using 80 grit on a hardware floor...it leaves fine scratches and you need to use finer compounds to finish the surface. The last time I did this was with the old yellow day school van owned by our church that had not seen exterior care of any sort for years. Yellow would rub off when you passed your palm over it. I pumiced it, threw on a coat of polish without taking out the fine scratches, and it it looked marvelous.
